Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company

The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, usually shortened to OR&N, was a rail and steamboat transport company in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It ran a rail network of about 1,143 miles that stretched east from Portland, Oregon, into northeastern Oregon, northeastern Washington and northern Idaho. The company began operating in 1896 as a consolidation of several smaller railroads, among them the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and the Washington and Idaho Railroad. It started as an independent carrier, but the Union Pacific bought a majority stake in 1898, and in 1910 it became a Union Pacific subsidiary under the name Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company. In 1936 Union Pacific formally absorbed the system, which became its gateway to the Pacific Northwest. Its history also includes shipping, since the company and its predecessors owned steamships and river steamboats on the Columbia River and the coast.